The thick of it Creator Armando Iannucci will write a stage adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film Dr. Strangelove.
The legendary film – officially the title Dr. Strange love or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – hit screens in 1964.
Discussing his adaptation, which is the first time the film has been adapted for the stage and will come to the West End in late 2024, Iannucci told BBC News: “As a story, it has strangely not gone away.
“It seems the right time to remind people of the crazy logic behind these dangerous games played by superpowers.”
While performing on BBC Radio 4Today, Iannucci added: “In these sad times, what better way to cheer up the nation than a stage show about the end of the world.”
He added: “We started talking about this adaptation several years ago, but now with the war in Ukraine and the whole nuclear issue, it just hasn’t gone away. I think a lot of our art is less about the past and more about the future.”
His co-writer and director Sean Foley added: “The themes in it are eternally relevant: the climate catastrophe, the end of the world is somewhere in our consciousness all the time now.”
Kubrick’s family also commented on the adaptation, which is the first time his work has been reproduced since his death.
His widow, Christiane Kubrick, said: “We’ve always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley’s work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn’t changed from how he finished that.
“But we couldn’t resist endorsing this project: the time is right; the people doing it are amazing; and Strange love must be brought to a new and younger audience. I’m sure Stanley would have approved too.”
In 2018, a new script by Kubrick was discovered 60 years after it was first written. Justified Burning secretthe piece was uncovered by Bangor University professor Nathan Abrams while researching a book about the director’s last project, Wide closed eyes.